JabberWokker

Member
Nov 10, 2005
293
0
16
Bali
We'll anyway as we are here, to make it relevant to the forum I was talking to my brother in law on Xmas day about the subject and he was very interested in bitcoins, I did not bring the subject up. I was told by him that Indonesia has decided to not recognise them and he owns a bank so knows what he is talking about. Is it good or bad I don't know, bad for me if I had bought some.
 
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ronb

Well-Known Member
Aug 14, 2007
2,241
56
48
Ubud, Bali
............... he was very interested in bitcoins, I did not bring the subject up. I was told by him that Indonesia has decided to not recognise them and he owns a bank so knows what he is talking about. ................

Bitcoin is topical. Much of the activity is in China, because it seems that people in other countries find is an easy way to pay Chinese manufacturers. So then governments wonder if they will be losing tax revenues. They react in different ways - take a look at the Wiki article at Bitcoin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, particularly the section Legal Status that goes country by country.

Its value fluctuates but has been generally rising, so speculators are attracted. Is it a bubble waiting to burst? Earlier this year a Slate journalist likened it to a Ponzi scheme. Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme: The Internet currency will collapse..

I have not found anything about an Indonesian government reaction. A recent Jakarta Globe article described it from an Indonesian perspective. Bitcoin Finds Itty-Bitty Market in Indonesia - The Jakarta Globe
 

Smoke

Active Member
Dec 3, 2011
1,395
1
36
Sanur
Buying and selling of Bitcoins is easy to do here . no idea if it legal or not but easy to do with a quick bank transfer or even western union payment
 

ferdie

Member
Apr 4, 2013
677
2
16
Near Ubud
Reminds me of the time I used E-gold to play around a bit
In my opinion, Bitcoin will be shutdown soon, because the bald eagle wouldn't like currency flying around without them having control over it:hopelessness:
 

ferdie

Member
Apr 4, 2013
677
2
16
Near Ubud
Ronb, Pirate bay has its fundamental flaw on its purpose, which is exchanging pirated movies and software, but for some online currencies? Its more about the fight over controls than ponzi scheme:devilish:
 

ferdie

Member
Apr 4, 2013
677
2
16
Near Ubud
I have posted my comments on bitcoins, but this one is quite interesting from Krugman

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/bitcoin-is-evil/?_r=0

Bitcoin Is Evil
It’s always important, and always hard, to distinguish positive economics — how things work — from normative economics — how things should be. Indeed, on many of the macro issues I’ve written about it has been obvious that large numbers of economists can’t bring themselves to make that distinction; they dislike activist government on political grounds, and this leads them to make really bad arguments about why fiscal stimulus can’t work and monetary stimulus will be disastrous. I don’t, by the way, think that this effect is symmetric: although people like Robert Lucas were quick to accuse people like Christy Romer of fabricating macro arguments to support a big-government agenda, this didn’t actually happen.

But I come now to talk not about macro but about money — specifically, about Bitcoin and all that.

So far almost all of the Bitcoin discussion has been positive economics — can this actually work? And I have to say that I’m still deeply unconvinced. To be successful, money must be both a medium of exchange and a reasonably stable store of value. And it remains completely unclear why BitCoin should be a stable store of value. Brad DeLong puts it clearly:

Underpinning the value of gold is that if all else fails you can use it to make pretty things. Underpinning the value of the dollar is a combination of (a) the fact that you can use them to pay your taxes to the U.S. government, and (b) that the Federal Reserve is a potential dollar sink and has promised to buy them back and extinguish them if their real value starts to sink at (much) more than 2%/year (yes, I know).

Placing a ceiling on the value of gold is mining technology, and the prospect that if its price gets out of whack for long on the upside a great deal more of it will be created. Placing a ceiling on the value of the dollar is the Federal Reserve’s role as actual dollar source, and its commitment not to allow deflation to happen.

Placing a ceiling on the value of bitcoins is computer technology and the form of the hash function… until the limit of 21 million bitcoins is reached. Placing a floor on the value of bitcoins is… what, exactly?
I have had and am continuing to have a dialogue with smart technologists who are very high on BitCoin — but when I try to get them to explain to me why BitCoin is a reliable store of value, they always seem to come back with explanations about how it’s a terrific medium of exchange. Even if I buy this (which I don’t, entirely), it doesn’t solve my problem. And I haven’t been able to get my correspondents to recognize that these are different questions.

But as I said, this is a positive discussion. What about the normative economics? Well, you should read Charlie Stross:

BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions.
Go read the whole thing.

Stross doesn’t like that agenda, and neither do I; but I am trying not to let that tilt my positive analysis of BitCoin one way or the other. One suspects, however, that many BitCoin enthusiasts are, in fact, enthusiastic because, as Stross says, “it pushes the same buttons as their gold fetish.”

So let’s talk both about whether BitCoin is a bubble and whether it’s a good thing — in part to make sure that we don’t confuse these questions with each other.

Any comments on India and China on bitcoin? I heard the value drops alot when China ban Bitcoin
 
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balibule

Active Member
Feb 6, 2009
1,059
1
38
yes, interesting read. Still, most of the articles I see online is that the USA is leaning towards accepting the Bitcoin. Whether it is a good thing or not I don't know.
 

spicyayam

Well-Known Member
Jan 12, 2009
3,592
342
83
BitCoins sound interesting and have read a few articles about them. For sure governments, banks and big businesses are going to be worried about it. But when you have well known economists and writers predicting its doom, then I think maybe it could be big. If you read negative articles about it and substitute "cash" for bitcoins, you could be reading about the same thing. Like, "they are used in crime", "people steal them". The comparison to PB is interesting as many governments around the world have tried to shut the site down, but it is still running. Now they are launching their own browser so it might even be more difficult to shutdown at the domain level. You could say the same thing about BC, so maybe China banning them had little affect. I started listening to this podcast and it sounds interesting, just have had a chance to hear it all: Bitcoin Discussion with Gavin Andresen and Amir Taaki on This Week in Startups #140 | ThisWeekIn Startups
 

Markit

Well-Known Member
Sep 3, 2007
9,317
1,110
113
Karangasem, Bali
Having listened to the BC discussion for a long time now I really don't feel any smarter. These are the things I think I know, I think...

1) BC are a computer generated money
Having spent most of my career working in computing and hardware I don't trust them any farther then I can throw em.
2) Their value is dictated by supply and demand - not sure where they are handled or that price is listed.
If it's not a valid listing agency can it ever be a valid currency?
3) Some guy lost 4000 BC when his old hard disk drive was thrown on the dump/tip 5 months ago - he is now full time employed digging up the tip looking for approximately $4,000,000 that were not worth thinking about 5 months ago.
If something that was worthless just a short time ago is now worth millions how fast can that reverse itself?
4) There will only ever be 21,000,000 BC in circulation.
What happens when say an organisation like the NSA buys all of them? How much are they then worth? Wouldn't that be a monopoly?
5) No one thinks they are real but the various governments that are either trying to forbid them or pretending to embrace them.
See 4 above
6) New BC are generated by some weird computing process called "mining" which is somewhat mystical in action or at least I don't understand it.
Can someone pop out and ask the music and film industry how difficult it is to make exact copies of their products.
 

meerkat

Member
Nov 14, 2011
108
1
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Ubud